


Hickory, Oak, Pine and Weed

by ignite



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: FAHC, Fake AH Crew, Fire, M/M, Magical Realism, and blood, and murder, immortal au, implied OT6 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 18:08:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13486917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignite/pseuds/ignite
Summary: Some say the city is his ; some say he is the city. That he is concrete, and steel, and streets painted by thousand upon thousand of lives running through them every single day -the soul of Los Santos, made flesh.





	Hickory, Oak, Pine and Weed

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try writing something a little different. I hope I managed.
> 
> Heavily inspired by Delta Rae's song [I Will Never Die](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ieUQxZQXrg), and the Brothers Bright's song [Blood On My Name.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz5Mx3a8kRw).

The earth shakes on a Monday.

Los Santos is no stranger to earthquakes. It agitates the birds, they croak and gather in black clouds against the blue sky. Dogs howl a warning. Nobody pays attention.

The TV flickers in the dim light of a derelict bar. The sound fizzles, lost in the rhythmic thud of glasses hitting tables and the low murmur of private conversations.

The news reporter tells the story of five unidentified corpses found on Mount Chiliad. And if the patrons’ eyes flick to the TV and catch part of the report, their attention quickly wavers.

Los Santos is a dangerous city. Death is nothing new.

***

There is a legend, one that has travelled through the streets like a summer’s breeze, quiet but persistent. The people of Los Santos know it like they know their ABCs. Not one of them can say they where they heard it first. As with all legends, it came from nowhere and it went everywhere.

It tells of a man whose eyes burn like flames, who can hide in any shadow and slip through any door. He kills without a noise and is gone without a trace. A shadow in the corner of your eye, a curse following your steps in the dark of the night.

Some say the city is his ; some say he is the city. That he is concrete, and steel, and streets painted by thousand upon thousand of lives running through them every single day -the soul of Los Santos, made flesh.

It’s an old tale. Everyone knows it, but nobody cares about it anymore.

***

It is the heart of Summer but this Tuesday morning brings thick, dangerous clouds. They curl around the skyscrapers, cast a shadow so dark it feels like the sun never rose.

Bad luck, thinks Los Santos. The late-summer storms are coming earlier than usual.

There is no rain. No thunder, no lightning. Only the clouds, and they trap the suffocating heat of August and the noxious smell of thousands of cars under them. The City sweats, melts ; it chokes on itself.

The old TV in the forgotten bar is flashing, it is dying under the heat and humidity. Anyone looking up at it might catch glimpses of police reports and wonder at the climbing death toll. Gangs are dying. Throats sliced, guts pierced, bodies drenched in gasoline and burned to a crisp until all that is left is an anonymous husk.

But Los Santos is a dangerous city.

***

The man in the legend is a vengeful one. If this City is his, then he does not allow anyone to do with it as they please.

Los Santos is ripe with crime. Street wars are an everyday occurrence, some places are forbidden at night.

But some murders are too clean. Too quick. Too unfathomable. It feeds the legend, even as no one thinks it true. These corpses are the remnants of people who thought themselves kings when they were barely pawns. Bit off more than they could chew and the City bit them back.

Nobody thinks the legends true, but people snicker in the face of anyone who declares themselves ready to take over Los Santos. It will not last long.

***

Tuesday evening comes and the clouds remain.

People look up at the sky, wondering what the weather is bringing. No storm, no rain, but the dark is foreboding. It cuts them off from the rest of the world, shrouds them in a quiet sort of intensity.

Electricity saturates the air. It zaps fingers reaching for door handles, it flashes along power lines. The smell of burnt ozone is descending into the streets as if lightning stroke just next door. The sound of sirens fills the space between buildings.

The heat is unbearable, trapped under the clouds. LSPD officers are sweating as they race to various parts of the city to pick up corpses in pools of blood, being pecked at by croaking crows.

And as night falls and coats the City in almost complete darkness, nervous figures meet up on street corners and under bridges.

The AH Crew was killed, they say. That’s who they found on Mount Chiliad last Sunday. Someone went after them and finally managed to kill them all.

And now, rival gangs are dropping like flies.

***

They were not the first gang to rise to fame. They were the first to do it so quickly, and to stay on top for so long.

They’d been around for years, before suddenly, their network expanded throughout the whole city. Doors opened before them as their opponents lay dead behind them. They became kings, unchallenged and unopposed, defying the one established law of Los Santos : reach the top and the city itself will cut you down.

The city must have… liked them.

They called themselves the Fakes. The AH Crew was what the journalists and the police knew them as. It was their name plastered over the news, their name whispered in both poor and wealthy company.

Nothing could stop them. They crept through the city like blood seeps through cracked pavement. Banks trembled, drug cartels were soon under their thumb. Accepting to be part of their network was benefitting from their protection. Many made that choice -being under their care brought sudden and complete immunity from the dangers Los Santos hid in dark corners.

Bullets aiming for them had the bad habit of hitting concrete walls instead ; so did cars chasing after them. Witnesses never remembered their faces ; victims and partners did, but refused to tell. As when you dealt with the Crew, either you were with them, or you were against them -and may God Himself pray for your soul. 

One of their most striking feature, if you believed people who had met them in person, was that you never saw one of them alone. It had long been speculated that taking one of them out was taking out the entire crew, but only once had some asshole managed to kidnap the British one and… well. The severed limbs the police had found the next day in a dumpster had never been to England.

They were six, they were powerful, and their reach grew each day.

And now…

***

The derelict bar has been in Los Santos for generations. The owner likes to say it’s been in his family since the 1920s. It stands in the oldest part of town, the one part that nobody has torn down and built anew on its ashes, its wooden beams apparent against the ceiling. It’s oak, says the owner. A good tree, the Oak tree, he continues to anyone willing to listen. Sturdy and sure. A protector.

The TV above the bar keeps flickering. The sound keeps tuning in and out. And in the corner, a man is smiling, his breath stinking of bad whiskey.

“I didn’t kill them,” he’s telling an even drunker man. “But I was there when they did it! It was beautiful, I’m telling you. Took months to plan. I sowed traitors through their ranks, got their own network to work against them. Lured them out on Chiliad and bam! Got them all. They were arguing among themselves, blaming each other for some stupid shit. Didn’t even notice the ambush until it was too late.”

“Who killed them?” asks the drunker one.

“Doesn’t matter, they’re dead too now. Got too thirsty, eh? You kill the biggest gang in town and suddenly you want to take down everyone else. They pro’bly tried to go after someone else and got their ass handed to them. Me? I don’t want to show off. I’m a quiet guy, me. I did my part, I got paid, and now I’m done.”

“You got five of them.”

“We got six,” grunts the man.

“Five.”

“No, I saw it with my own eyes. Six guys gunned down. The police lost a fucking corpse, I don’t know, but we got them all.”

The drunker man slumps over the table. “D’you think the sixth one woke up?”

“Oh please, you actually believe this shit? Those bastards acted like they were gods and everyone starts believing it? They died like the assholes they were, they weren’t special. Get your head outta your ass.”

Nobody pays attention to the two men.

Above the skyline of Los Santos, the clouds turn even darker. Street lamps light up hours before their time.

A noise, and suddenly yellow sparks bursts out of the TV. The image goes static, frozen on the picture of an ambulance on a street corner, behind yellow police tape.

The TV turns off. The owner grumbles, smacks it on the side. It stays dead.

The lights above head flicker.

“Damn storm,” says one man.

“It’s not storming,” remarks another, looking out of the window. “Just those clouds. Wait…”

He stops talking, his eyes go wide. And the front door bursts open.

For a moment, there’s nobody standing there. It’s as if the wind alone fractured the door, if only there was any wind. A single black bird flies in and perches on an empty table.

Then there’s crackle of electricity, and a shadow appears in the shattered doorframe.

***

The derelict bar had been in Los Santos for generations.

On a Tuesday night, under clouds dark as the deepest night, it goes up in flames.

The fire is quick to spread. It snakes along the streets, taking root in concrete and steel as easily as it would in dry wood.

Alarms and sirens fill the air for a while. Then they stop.

The flames rise higher, reach further. They climb up to the clouds and swallow the city in a matter of hours. Miles and miles of raging inferno.

Cars line the roads outside Los Santos, trying to drive away from the hungry flames reaching for them as if to recall them, bring them back into the city where they belong.

If they’d look toward Mount Chiliad, they would see the silhouette of a man standing alone in the night, watching the fire devour life and concrete. His blue and black jacket torn to shreds, hanging on his body like old rags. His hair falling before his eyes in a mess of filthy strands. He watches quietly.

***

Los Santos is a dangerous place. Very few people have never played a role in any criminal machination. Knowingly or not, small part of bigger one.

To take down a crew as connected as the Fakes, many people had to play a part. Trick, manipulate, twist every word around until all the lies were too entangled together to tell one from the other, until the Fakes themselves were confused and started to blame each other and break apart.

Cheat, in other words. Cheat at a cheating game.

The man in the legend is a vengeful one. If this city is his, then it betrayed him by turning against him and the ones he’d sworn to protect.

And it is his right to cleanse it.

Some of the cheaters will escape, he knows. But not for long. Nobody has ever escaped him. And for the first time in a very, very long time… he will not be alone. 

It is with slow and deliberate steps that he walks toward the flames. They reflect in his eyes, dance in his pupils. A bolt of lightning runs along the clouds above head.

He reaches out with a hand. The flames wrap around his arm. They ignite his clothes and swallow him whole as he stands there, unmoving, until there is nothing left of him just as there is nothing left of the city.

Nobody will ever know five corpses are missing from the charred remnants of an LSPD morgue.

***

Down in Georgia, three trees stand in a near-perfect triangle in the middle of an abandoned field long claimed by weed. Crows are resting on their branches, fluffing their feathers.

A man in a pristine black and blue jacket, his long blond hair tied behind his head, walks toward them with slow steps. Every time his feet hit the soft earth, a beat rises to meet them, slow and steady.

He kneels under the bigger tree. From a wooden chest that he did not have with him earlier, he pulls a small object, wet and glistening with red. He sets it aside as he goes to work, digging into the earth with his bare hands until the hole is big enough for the object to rest. He covers it carefully.

He does this five times, with five different objects pulled from the same wooden chest.

Then he sits under the oak tree, rests his back against its bark, and closes his eyes. The beat under him grows louder.

It is soon joined by another. And another, and another, until six beats gently pulse under the earth.

The sun above him is dipping below the horizon. The shadows cast by the trees grow longer.

Something shifts. A warm breeze ruffles the man’s hair.

A shadow detaches itself from the tree behind him.

Four others follow.

“Ryan?”

The man smiles. He stands, slowly unfolding his body, and his shadow unfurls behind him like a crow’s wing. His hands are empty, but he closes his fingers around a knife. 

“Three of them escaped,” he says slowly. 

The five men before him nod. Their previously empty hands are holding guns.

“Let’s get them.”


End file.
